Crossfire
by KaiserPhoenix
Summary: General Hux is injured. Hux's communicator has stopped working and he can't contact anyone to come and find him, but Kylo Ren senses something.


General Hux lay in the snow with his hand instinctively pressed against the wound in his side. He was bleeding profusely and he knew it was futile to try and stop it without even the most basic of medical equipment. Hux would certainly need stitches and maybe a turn in the bacta tank — if he survived long enough to return to base.

Hux tried to get up, but the pain in his side rendered his muscles incapable of achieving the necessary tension to rise. At least try to sit up instead of lying here in this forsaken snow, Hux thought to himself. With his free hand, he attempted to push himself into a slightly more dignified position, but he could do little more than roll over.

Hux was absolutely furious with himself for allowing the conditions under which he was shot. He was General Hux of the First Order and he had permitted a common Resistance fighter to shoot him. He had at least had the strength to fire back and kill his aggressor — contrary to popular belief, he was a deadly shot — but the fact that he was wounded in the first place was humiliating and unforgivable.

The General could feel blood soaking his clothes, his confidence seeping away with it. He could feel it staining the thickness of his greatcoat and couldn't help but mourn the loss of his uniform, which he always wore with pride and kept meticulously clean. If you survive, you can order another one, he thought bleakly.

Turning his mind away from his ruined parade garb, Hux had more pressing matters to attend to. Unfortunately for him, the blaster bolt had hit Hux while he was communicating with Captain Phasma. The shock of being hit had thrown his communicator from his hand and it was now several feet away. Even if Hux was capable of crawling to it, the device had shattered on impact and was utterly useless.

In that moment, Hux bitterly regretted his decision not to have a position sensor fitted to his belt, as Kylo Ren had done several months before the destruction of Starkiller Base. Ren allowed it and it saved his life, Hux remembered.

Hux had been gobsmacked when Ren had agreed to it and had taunted him smugly when he found that he could track Ren's every move. Not that the sensor improved Ren's dreadful temper but it at least enabled Hux to locate whichever console Ren fancied destroying that day, immediately.

Hux never thought he would be happy in Kylo Ren's presence, much less that he would ever wish for it but as he reminisced about the knight's childish outbursts, he thought that even the sight of Ren would not be unwelcome right now.

Hux sighed, the fog of his breath staining the now darkening sky. There was nothing he could do; he was either going to die or be captured. He couldn't determine which fate would be worse. Perhaps another Resistance fighter would find him, remember all the people he had murdered and kill him in a fit of rage. Or maybe he would freeze to death in the harsh weather.

Perhaps the Resistance would take him prisoner and torture him. Hux had been trained to withstand the most severe torture methods in the Galaxy and fully believed that it would be a long time before the Resistance broke him, if ever. For some reason, focusing on all the possible outcomes of the situation, however grim, was a comfort to Hux. It distracted him from the pain of his present condition. It allowed him to formulate survival strategies for each scenario. Even when contemplating his own demise, General Hux was always planning something.

In an attempt to keep warm, Hux pulled his greatcoat, now heavy with blood, around himself. He was starting to go numb from the cold, a welcome respite from the sharp pain of his open wound. Hux closed his eyes. No, he commanded himself, you will not fall asleep. You will not pass out.

He felt fainter from blood loss with each passing second.

The last thing Hux remembered was cursing the weakness of his human body before he fell into unconsciousness.

* * *

Sitting by a viewport aboard his command shuttle, Kylo Ren jolted, as though a tiny electric current had passed through him.  
Kylo closed his eyes in meditation. He searched for the source of the disruption. A battle scene came into his head. He could see it: the First Order Stormtroopers, camouflaged in white against the heavy snow; the Resistance fighters armed with blasters.

He saw Captain Phasma combatant, her chrome armour reflecting the flashes of blaster fire around her. She shot ruthlessly, taking down every obstacle, sentient or not, in her path. Kylo noted that Phasma defended her nearby troopers too, calling for them to dodge blasts headed dangerously fast in their direction, and striking down potential attackers before they could even prepare their trigger fingers. She cared for them, Kylo could tell.

Kylo scanned his interior field of vision for more information. An image interrupted him: a figure lying face down in the snow, their red hair sharp against the snow, against their dark uniform. Kylo concentrated harder, looking for more details. This time, Kylo saw a dark stain forming under the body, blood sinking into the snow.

Then another vision: Kylo saw himself, standing still while a droid inserted a position sensor in his belt; cut to Hux smirking as he tracked Kylo's path back to his quarters after training; cut to Kylo slashing at yet another console and Hux berating him for his lack of discipline; cut to darkness. Even in the darkness, Kylo was compelled, pulled towards the source of the vision.  
Hux, Kylo thought. Stars above… Hux is thinking of me.

All of a sudden, the feeling that pulled at him was gone. Where is he?

Distressed by the loss of connection, Kylo recalled the last time he had seen Hux. The General had curtly informed Ren that he had acquired the location of a suspected Resistance hideout. They couldn't have stayed in the Ileenium system for much longer, Hux had explained, after the First Order tracked them there. We're preparing for attack, Hux had said.

Kylo Ren opened his eyes. He strode to the cockpit of his shuttle and shoved the pilot aside. Kylo punched in some co-ordinates, the numbers vivid in his mind. Kylo had no idea where this planet was or how to get there, only that General Hux was on that planet and that the sequence of numbers in his head was where he had to be.

* * *

The sky was almost completely dark by the time Kylo Ren's shuttle descended on the remote planet. He had seen Hux with his own eyes as the ship began its descent. When he landed, Kylo all but ran towards Hux's prone form, worse than icy cold from his time in the snow. How long has he been there?

Kylo knelt down and leaned in closer to check whether Hux was breathing. He was: the faintest of breaths escaped his blue-tinged lips. To his alarm, the stain in the snow continued to darken and he realised that Hux was still bleeding. Kylo turned Hux over onto his back.

"Hux! Hux, get up!" Kylo slapped Hux in the face hard, but his pale skin was too drained to even bear the mark of Kylo Ren's small act of violence. "You kriffing idiot, Hux! Don't do this to me!" Kylo hit him again, as if inflicting more injuries on him would rouse him from his unconscious state. "Wake up, you slimy sycophant!" Kylo was surprised to hear his own voice; even through the vocoder's distortion, he could hear it shaking.

Cursing, Kylo pulled the General's coat around him as tight as he could and took off his own cowl and pressed it to the deep gash in Hux's side. Slipping one arm underneath the crook of Hux's knees and the other under his back, Kylo lifted Hux and carried him into the shuttle, giving orders through his helmet's built-in comm for a medical team to greet him.

"It's going to be all right," he said, unsure of whether he was speaking to the General in his arms or to himself. "You're going to be all right."

Kylo laid Hux on a stretcher, a crude contraption but preferable to his previous environment. He followed the medical team as they rushed Hux to medbay, staying back as humans and droids alike swarmed around him. Kylo pulled the nearest medic aside and growled, "If he dies, so do you and all the rest of them."

Kylo sat and watched them as they cut away Hux's prized uniform, stemmed the blood flow, scanned him for further damage, cleaned his visible wounds, patched him up, and hooked him up to a fluid drip all at once.  
"We've managed to stabilise him, sir," squeaked the poor medic who Kylo had threatened. "He's going to be fine."

"You are dismissed," Kylo muttered. The medic headed off, happy to be out of Kylo Ren's presence. As soon as the medic was gone, Kylo unlatched his mask and removed it, his dark hair falling in waves almost to his shoulders. Approaching the sedated Hux, Kylo was relieved to see that he was already regaining some colour. Well, he's regaining what little colour he had to begin with, Kylo thought.

Taking one of Hux's hands in his own, Kylo Ren leaned down and kissed Hux on the lips. It was no more that a touch; Kylo pulled away almost as soon as his lips brushed Hux's, but it was enough. "You ginger nut," Kylo said aloud. "I thought I lost you."  
Kylo Ren returned to his medbay seat and kept vigil, waiting for Hux to awaken.

 **Notes:**

\- I got a bit carried away with this one. I have a soft spot for injured Hux.  
\- I really do believe that Kylo Ren would slap Hux upon finding him. Not with the intent of hurting him but because he needs reassurance that Hux is going to wake up. Also he doesn't know how to deal with the distress, so he handles it how he handles everything else: violently.


End file.
